Pro-gender advocates believe gender-integration is crucial to marriage, the bedrock of culture. This allows children to grow up with both a mother and a father. They believe it makes more sense to base marriage law on gender, which is biological and immutable, rather than sexual orientation, which is fluid and subjective. In contrast, the born-this-way believers have elevated sexual orientation to such an extent that it has become more important than sexual gender.

Has the intensification of the debate over marriage affected a slowdown in what looked like an inexorable climb in support for the gay lobby’s cause in the United States? A reading of the detailed breakdown of the Pew Research Centre’s feedback on public opinion on the topic there might suggest something like this.

A suggestion that there might be a more formal and concerted effort by all faith communities in Britain to defend marriage has been made by the representative of the Pope to England, Scotland an Wales. The Daily Telegraph reports today that Archbishop Antonio Mennini, the Apostolic Nuncio, called for closer co-operation with other faiths as well as Christian denominations to put pressure on the Government over its plans to allow same-sex couples to marry.

What those who value the traditional married state perhaps fear most is that in the unravelling of traditional units, in the blending of disparate families, in the separation of procreation from the linear narratives captured in multi-generational family trees, we grow closer to a chaotic state where our connections weaken and where the common good is not ultimately served.